Yes.Honey has been used to treat wounds for thousands of years and is still used today.The best known antibacterial and antifungal honey is manuka honey,made by bees feeding on manuka,the tea tree bush Leptospermum scoparium,which grows in New Zealand and Australia.It has been reported to inhibit more than 80 species of bacterium,and recent research is investigating how it works.

Bacteria that live on your skin,such as Streptococcus pyogenes,are normally harmless but sometimes prevent wounds from healing by clumping together to build a ‘biofilm’.This film then prevents drugs such as antibiotics from entering the wound.Recent research shows that manuka honey prevents these bacteria from sticking to the wound tissue and can even destroy the biofilms once they have formed.No instances of honey-resistant bacteria have been reported and applying antibacterial agents directly to the sking to clear bacteria from wounds is far preferable to using systemic antibiotics.So honey may be a very useful treatment.